


Of Awkwardness

by Mosca



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Cross-Generational Friendship, Gen, Male-Female Friendship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-28
Updated: 2014-01-28
Packaged: 2018-01-10 09:44:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,357
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1158141
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mosca/pseuds/Mosca
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Anya wanted to "hang out."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Of Awkwardness

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to Sandyk for the beta and for being my friend.
> 
> This is set during season 5, right after "Family."
> 
> I wrote this for the Friendship Ficathon for zandra_x, and I originally posted it to my Livejournal in May 2005.

Anya wanted to "hang out." She had been saying it all day, as if Giles hadn't caught her meaning the first seventeen times she brought it up. She wanted to watch a movie and order some takeout, because that was what friends did, wasn't it? And she liked to think they were more than just co-workers, that she was more than his employee, that they got along well for two prickly and unsociable people, and didn't Giles think it would be fun to hang out tomorrow evening if he didn't have a hot date or some other excuse?

Giles ignored her loudly while fantasizing about ways to silence her with the overstock. She'd given him a polite way to bow out, although he doubted she would believe that he had a date. The children preferred to think of him as sexless and monastic, even when provided with evidence to the contrary. _Especially_ when provided with evidence to the contrary.

He wondered if there was something in the overstock that might provide him with a hot date. He was long overdue for a meaningless physical encounter.

"I have the movie all picked out," Anya said, cracking a roll of quarters into the register. "It's my favorite. I love it so much that Xander won't watch it with me anymore. It disturbs him when I cry at the end."

Giles did not want to think about what kind of film would make Anya burst into tears, let alone watch it with her while sharing a pizza and feigning civility. But she seemed so eager for him to approve of her taste in cinema, and he was running out of small chores that required him to turn his back to her. "What film?" he said.

" _9 to 5_ ," she said. "It's about three plucky, underpaid women, who—"

"I've seen it," he said. At the cinema, when the film was originally released, which he did not mention, as it would have reinforced the feelings of obsolescence that the children imposed on him daily. "But not for a long time."

She shot him a skeptical look. Every so often, something in her manner would remind him that she was older than he, so much older that he could not conceive of it, and that his conception of twenty years as a lifetime ago only served to reveal the mereness of his mortality. "Then you'll want to see it again," she said.

He sighed. "All right. Tomorrow evening."

"Oh, and can we do it at your place? I don't want to have to kick Xander out of our apartment."

He sighed again.

*

Giles had ordered a pizza. He had, in fact, taken advantage of some sort of "Meal Deal" that involved salad, breadsticks, and a two-liter bottle of soda. He had also wiped down the coffee table, vacuumed, and locked in his bedroom any and all items that he did not want to have to explain to Anya. He stood in the middle of his living room, fidgeting. Occasionally, he stopped wondering why Buffy accused him of being fussy.

Anya rang the doorbell four times in rapid succession. She shoved a videotape into Giles's hand. "I'm not good with VCRs," she said. "I've already broken two."

"You're an expensive guest," Giles said. It came out as more of an insult than he'd intended.

"I'll reimburse you for any damages," she said. Giles wished there were a trace of irony in her voice. She charged in, situated herself in the exact center of the couch, and opened the pizza box. "What kind?" she said, as if it weren't obvious.

He was officially taken aback and socially inept. "Plain cheese," he said. "I—I—wasn't sure what kind you would like. Now, I suppose I could have called..."

"Plain is best," she said. "Everything else is too cluttered. Or overly meaty. Put on the movie."

Dumbstruck, he did so. Anya watched the film in absolute rapt silence, chewing slowly. Giles had worried she'd talk over the it, as Xander in particular was prone to do. He'd got into the habit of re-renting the films that the children invited him to watch, and he almost always discovered that the Scooby soundtrack had obscured all actual content, only sometimes for the better. Grateful as he was for the opportunity to hear the original dialogue, Anya's silence was a bit eerie: laughing at the funnier moments made him self-conscious. Anya guffawed at unpredictable, nonsensical junctures. And, as advertised, she sniffled softly and wiped at her eyes when the women in the film got their comeuppance. 

Anya watched the credits in their entirety before stopping the tape. "Thank you for not talking," she said. 

"One would think it was common courtesy," he said.

"One would _think,_ " she agreed. She stood and smoothed her skirt. He wondered if she was just going to leave, having been fed and entertained. It might save them both a lot of torture, he thought—the socially inept should not force themselves to interact beyond their abilities. But it would be awkward at the Magic Box, more awkward than it already was; he had to work with Anya, no matter how little they had to say to one another, and it was wisest to establish _some_ sort of relationship.

He'd felt this sort of isolation, well, more than a few times in his life. Never so much, though, as when he'd first come to Sunnydale. Those early days in the dark, cool library when Buffy would complain about her schoolwork and make jokes to impress her new friends. She knew that Giles couldn't sympathize with the former and often couldn't understand the latter. But she fought him into the conversation, teased him until he had to respond, dared him to scold her for failing to care about the periodic table or _The Scarlet Letter_. He kept his distance, and she kept running up to tag him on the shoulder. 

"We—we haven't even _touched_ the breadsticks," he said.

Anya helped herself. She ate an entire breadstick without speaking, then said, "You're not that kind of boss."

He hoped he hadn't made some kind of untoward gesture that he wasn't aware of. He scooted as deep into the arm of the couch as he could.

"I would never try to overthrow you," she clarified. "Or play retaliatory pranks on you. You're a fair boss, and I enjoy being your employee. I also enjoy socializing with you, despite the awkwardness."

"It doesn't need to be awkward." He said it fast, ahead of himself, and he thought: that's the kind of thing one says to women when one is coming on to them. She didn't seem to catch it. He was intensely grateful for her lack of perception. 

"Next week," she said. "You pick the movie, and I'll bring hot wings. If you like hot wings. You don't have to."

Giles had never eaten a hot wing. He had been in their presence, but there had always been other options. He was suddenly curious, as if he had been handed the grammar to an unfamiliar demon dialect. There was something about movies and silence that was better when shared. 

"No picking a boring movie, though," she said. "Nothing where the whole point is that they fall in love and live happily ever after." 

He did not have a problem with this. He suspected that they shared a taste in films. This was somewhat unnerving, but it was worth not wasting. There was something endearing about her and about her insistence that they become friends; it made him wonder what she meant by friendship. It made him wonder whether she hadn't, after all, figured out what the word meant.

He decided to wait a while before subjecting her to _Withnail and I_. "Next week," he said. "Hot wings. And I shall... rent something exciting."

"Violence is good," she said. Gingerly, she retrieved her tape from the VCR. 

"Take the breadsticks," he said.

"Next week," she said, and she left.

Of course, he realized, she knew what friendship was. She was so much older than him. So very much older.


End file.
